The Freak Observer (2 page)

Next thing I knew, I was the happiest kid in the world and that puppy was giving me a tongue bath like crazy. He smelled a little bit like creamed corn.

Esther is dead now. She was a defender of puppies and a whacker of pigs, and now she is dead.

“Yes,” I say, “I knew her.”

“Well,” says Mrs. Bishop, “How are you handling that?”

“I'm OK,” I lie. “It's sad, but I'm doing OK.”

The truth is just way too complicated, and it doesn't belong in this conversation: My dad lost his shit and clobbered me with a toilet plunger, and then I totally lost
my
shit and started hallucinating again. You know how it is. . . . Same-ol', same-ol'.

“I need to tell you that I sent a letter to your parents.”

Well, I'd better keep a close eye on the mail, because that is a little gathering shit storm on the horizon. Does Mrs. Bishop really think my parents are going to read a letter on official school stationery and then sit me down at the kitchen table and say, “Honey, school's important”? Does she imagine there will be hugs and a brand-new graphing calculator, just to show they care?

My family is more about yelling than hugging.

There will be yelling if that letter is read. Some of that yelling will be directed at Mrs. Bishop—“and-who-does-she-think-she-is-the-bitch?”—and some will be at me—“damn-it-to-hell-look-where-your-cattin'-around-got-you”—and some might be at Little Harold if he has the TV on too loud or if he left the bread unwrapped so it will dry out. Oh, yeah, it would be a very special after-school special. I can hardly wait.

“We understand how upsetting this sort of thing can be, especially when you are still working through . . . ” she trails off—then gets back on track, “But you have to come to school. We have to keep you headed toward graduation. We like you, but we don't want you to spend an extra year with us.”

It's a dumb joke, but she might be telling me the truth. I think she really does like me. I think she really does want me to graduate. I also think she gives that speech to a lot of kids, and most of them end up with a GED or in the alternative program or working some crap job.

“Not that I think that is going to happen. But this is the year, Loa, this is the year that grades matter. The universities will be most interested in what you do this year. Scholarships are harder and harder to find—grants seem like they get smaller every year. So I just wanted to let your parents know the situation. We all need to work together. We need to make sure your grades prove you can make it.” She shifts gears a little, rummages around in one of the piles on her desk.

“I also wanted to give you this. Another student was considering this school. It seems like a good fit for you. And this one too.” She is collecting some bright and shiny booklets and pamphlets in her hand. “You need to start thinking about applying to schools. There is a meeting about the financial aid process during your lunch period next week. You need to go. Listen for the announcement. And you should probably get back on track with speech and debate. Activities like that make a difference when they look at your application.”

“I lost my debate partner,” I say.

“Ah, yes, you were on a team with Corey.” She pauses a little. Her face is resting in just a little bit of a smile. The worry lines fade out of her forehead. “What a great opportunity for him.”

“A great opportunity,” I agree. Repetition always sounds like agreement unless you make it sound like a question.

“You could try an individual event like Lincoln-Douglas or Impromptu. Corey used to do Impromptu before the two of you teamed up for debate.”

There are at least seven good reasons why I would suck at Impromptu, but I have the answer that trumps all answers.

“I have to work. I work after school and on the weekends now, so practice and traveling to meets is out.”

“Oh. I'd forgotten.”

Did she know? I never told her. Is she supposed to know everything about every student?

“Well, that's good too.”

She is unstoppable.

“Working to save money for college shows real responsibility.”

I think we spent my last check on toilet paper, wool socks, and gas. A college fund is a little low on the list of priorities right now—below laundry detergent, actually, and way below the power bill. This is a situation where the best answer is a nod.

Things are wrapping up. She scribbles out a hall pass and late excuse for me. “Take care, Loa.”

Now I get to take my note and slither into French.

. . .

“Lulu! Voozetahnretahr.”

“Maywe, juhzsweearetard.”
I should get points for honesty too.

. . .

I missed school. I'm entitled to make up the work, because death is a good excuse.

In French I get a ziplock bag full of mini-tapes and a crappy little tape player.
Voila, c'est facile
—or, as I like to say,
Wallasayfasill
.

In math all I need to do is adjust the dates on the syllabus. Each missed assignment is now due one week later.

There are no daily assignments in computing. I either turn my programs and web page in by the last week of term or I fail. I could probably do everything in one sleepless code-monkey marathon if I had access to a computer for more than forty-five minutes a school day. Anyway, not to worry. I have that covered.

In English, Miss (Heartless) Hart says there is no way to make up for the missed discussions in class. Have I kept up with the reading schedule? I would like to point out that I could keep up with her reading schedule even if I had to reinvent the alphabet on a daily basis before I got started. I don't point that out. I just bask in her glare.

During lunch I revisit Mr. Banacek in physics.

“You can just pull something out of the extra-credit jar,” he says. So I reach in and fish out a scrap of paper. It says:

Freak Observer (Boltzmann Brain)

“Write me something, and get it to me by the end of the quarter. OK, Loa?” He looks like he knows he should say something kind.

“I have to hurry. I'll miss my class,” I say, to make it easier for both of us.

. . .

It is hard riding the bus home. I take a seat behind J.B. the driver and plug the taped French lessons into my head. It's my only defense against the inevitable. And it won't work, because the inevitable is inevitable.

The bus goes right by the place where Esther died.

It was bad in the morning when I was going to school, but it is worse now in the afternoon, because I know it is going to happen. Shutting my eyes and pretending French is a language isn't going to help. Nothing is going to help.

This is how it happened.

The trooper was nice. He let me ride in the front seat. He pulled out a box of some industrial-grade tissues when he saw me wiping my snot on my sleeve.

Then he said, “I'm sorry. I have to take you home. It's the law.”

When he said it, I believed him. And I felt a little sorry for him, because troopers have to do a lot of things that are terrible, like being where death happens. It's just part of their job. They arrive and they decide who is alive and who is dead and who is responsible. They talk on their radios, and they talk to the ones left living, and sometimes they take people home—even and especially if they don't want to go home.

The troopers weren't the first ones at the scene. The truck driver was there. I and Abel were both there. And Esther's body was there. I don't know who called the troopers, but I remember the sirens seemed to start almost as soon as I could figure out what had happened.

I hadn't even been looking at Esther. I was watching the river current and thinking about how the water looked almost predictable when it broke around the rocks into rapids. I know about chaos physics. I know the breaking point of a riffle around a rock is no more predictable than the way wind sculpts a cloud. I know that, but it didn't stop me from trying to see the pattern. So I was neglecting Esther. If she had invited me to come along so she would have had someone to talk to, I was a bad choice. I was all burrowed into my brain.

The last I saw her, she was standing at the top of the cutbank. What she was thinking then or what she was thinking when she ran down the bank, I do not know. I told them that.

I heard tires squeal.

I heard a crash that went on and on.

By the time I ran partway down the bank toward the highway, the logging truck was jackknifed at the bottom of the hill. His load had broken loose, and some of the logs were still shifting, still moving to the place gravity wanted them to be. One of them had shot way down the road and shattered on impact. Velocity. Acceleration. Linear momentum.

It amazed me. Like WOW! Look at that tree exploded to splinters—an origami shooting star.

The trucker had his door open and was kneeling on the pavement. He was pretty lucky to have got out of that mess still walking. One of his logs could have moved right through him on its trajectory. I could hear him yelling, but I couldn't figure out what he was saying. It was kind of broken up and hard to understand because he was puking. He was still trying to say something, but the words were lost in gagging and spitting.

I was so distracted by that guy that I didn't see the rest of the picture right away.

Then I saw Esther.

My first thought was

 

Her heart has fallen out of her body.

I didn't know that could happen. I didn't know what to do. So I just froze there on the cutbank.

 

I don't know how to put a heart back into a body.

It was the only thought I had, and it wasn't very useful.

It seemed like a long time, but it wasn't really, because Abel was right behind me, and he pushed me out of the way. I slid down the bank in the loose dirt and rocks. Then I just sat there where I fell. I watched Abel while he grabbed his sister and tried to make her be alive.

I could see that her heart hadn't fallen out. The muscle on her arm had been torn away from the bone. It was just a lump of muscle. Her heart was safe inside her, but she was still dead.

I didn't go to her. I was afraid to go down the bank and onto the highway. I was afraid to look and I was afraid to see.

I wasn't a very good friend.

I guess I could have touched her hand or said her name. I didn't. Maybe that's the sort of thing I will regret for the rest of my life. I don't know. So far the rest of my life hasn't been very long.

. . .

The troopers came with their sirens and flashing lights. They put flares in the road so the accident wouldn't get worse. Pretty soon it was dark, and the paramedics came and gathered Esther up and took her away. Abel went too. They didn't use the siren when they drove away. It was that silent ambulance that got me. I might have been OK if it hadn't been for that quiet ambulance.

A trooper came and led me to his car. I answered all his questions, but I don't think my answers were much use: It was just the three of us so far; the others weren't there yet; we hadn't been drinking because there wasn't anything to drink; we were waiting. Abel was sitting in the cab smoking—just Marlboros. I was sitting on the tailgate, staring at the river. I don't know what was going on with Esther.

“There are two kinds of people,” said the trooper, “The ones who run toward the accident and the ones who run away.” I think he was trying to console me or help me not feel guilty.

Then he said it was time to get me home. The clock on the dashboard of the cruiser said it was 10:37.

The headlights of the trooper's car carved little cones of visibility in the night. It was a very dark world. The river beside the road was blacker than the riverbanks. The trees were darker than the sky. The stars were little and far away. I watched them, and I watched the reflectors on the mile markers. The stars and the reflectors seemed pretty pathetic in the middle of all that night.

We were going to be at my turnoff soon. I didn't say anything. If I stayed quiet, the trooper might just keep driving on and on, up the valley, past the subdivisions and the old ranches.

It was a silly idea. Troopers know where the roads are. I had told him my name and address during the questioning. He knew where to turn away from the blacktop and which dirt road led to my house. I wish we lived deeper up the canyon, but we're not that far from the main road. It is just too little time to get my shit together. The road curves around the old pasture fence. There is our barn where nothing lives anymore. The house huddles in the dark, smaller than the barn and almost as empty.

Thin grey light escapes the windows of the kitchen and bathroom. I know the trooper is going to that door, the back door, in the middle of the scabbed-on addition to the main house. The real front door faces the creek because the house turns its back on the road. Nothing good ever comes from that direction. That's what the house seems to believe.